Implicit Meaning was defined to us in class as: The significance left for the viewer to discover upon analysis or reflection. It is something that you have to interpret.
I found a good way to define how to find meaning constructively in films in a book titled, “Making Meaning: Interface and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema. In this book, David Bordwell states:
“Taking meaning-making as a constructive activity leads us to a fresh model of interpreting films. The critic does not burrow into the context, probe it, get behind its facade, dig to reveal its hidden meanings; the surface/depth metaphor does not capture the inferential process of interpretation. On the constructive account, the critic starts with aspects of the film (“cues”) to which certain meanings are ascribed.”
(Bordwell, 1991)
After coming across a book entitled, “The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood” by Alison McMahan, I was intrigued of the story where Tim Burton is asked to direct Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp. In this part of the book, Alison McMahan explains the meaning that is supposed to be taken after seeing the production. I found it to be interesting to hear the directors point of view of the implicit meaning that was hidden in the production. You are usually not that fortunate to hear from the director, and only left to talk with your friends or just ponder the thoughts to yourself. This way, you know what the real meaning was directly from the creator. Below, I have the section of the book that discusses Aladdin and then I explain what the implicit meaning was from this section.
“In 1985, after Burton had made Frankenweenie, which featured Shelly Duvall, Duvall invited him to direct Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp, an episode of Showtime’s Faerie Tale Theatre series for which she was the host and executive producer. Burton was honored to be asked, especially because name directors like Francis Ford Coppola usually directed. Also, it would be his first production away from Disney. As with Hansel and Gretel, Burton was faced with a format over which he had little control, and a tight budget. Again, Burton brought on Rick Heinrichs and Steven Chiodo for model and effects work. Burton had a week to produce the show, which was shot on videotape with three cameras, a new format for him. The episode, which is still available on video, features Leonard Nimoy, as the evil magician who first leads Aladdin to the magic lamp, and James Earl Jones, as the narrator, the Genie of the Ring, and the Genie of theLamp. Burton was less starstruck working with them than he had been with Vincent Price on Vincent. The story begins with Aladdin, as a happy go lucky fatherless boy about town who survives by pickpocketing and petty thievery. He encounters a magician who claims to be his long-lost uncle. Though Aladdin and his mother are doubtful, they are pleased to be fed and at the prospect that the uncle will set Aladdin up in business. Bt the Uncle’s real goal is to have Aladdin go to a cavern in the desert and steal a magic lamp from its magical guardians. The cave features a humorous use of forced perspective, the kind of extenal-to-the-narrative joke that Burton would use increasingly in his later films. There are two magic trees in the cave that have fruit that turns into jewels when picked. The lamp itself is held in place by a hand protruding from the mouth of a large fish. When Aladdin steals the lamp, monstrous figures on the wall come to life and appear ready to chase him. When Aladdin refuses to give his uncle the lamp, the uncle locks him in the cave. However, Aladdin manages to escape with the help of the Genie of the Ring. When he returns to town, he catches a forbidden glimpse of the sultan’s daughter as she goes to her bath and promptly falls in love. He sends his mother to plead his case to the sultan, with the jewels he took from the fruit tree as gifts. However, the grand vizier convinces the sultan that he himself is a better match. Meanwhile, Aladdin discovers the lamp’s hidden powers accidentally and gets the genie to help him win the princess. The sultan is fond of bizarre toys, and Aladdin gets his attention by having the genie provide him with a sort of television and by building a new palace over-night. However, once Aladdin is happily married, his uncle manages to steal the lamp from the princess, and Aladdin has to struggle all over again to get it back, which he and the princess manage to do in collaboration.
The story’s moral seems to be that good fortune can come to the undeserving, but they have to earn it in order to keep it. For Aladdin, this means showing kindness to the class of poor folk he came from and being polite, as well as firm, with the genie, who has a deliciously reactionary sense of humor, played to the hilt by James Earl Jones. This blatant message about paternalism as the ennobling characteristic of the upper class is overlaid by a more subtle one: although the transfer of power goes through the Princess, she is not allowed to rule or even to be looked at by others, ensuring that she lies her life in virtual isolation. As if to emphasize this, her boudoir greatly resembles that of Jeannie’s (from the television series I Dream of Jeannie) in her bottle, as does the shape of the castle that Aladdin has the genie build for her. The fact that Aladdin can discard her whenever he pleases is also alluded to by the genie, who protests that he doesn’t want to build anything too fancy if Aladdin isn’t fully committed to the relationship.”
(McMahan, 2005)
So, In this story about Aladdin, it is said that, “The story’s moral seems to be that good fortune can come to the undeserving, but they have to earn it in order to keep it. For Aladdin, this means kindness to the class of poor folks he came from and being polite, as well as firm, with the genie, who has a deliciously reactionary sense of humor.” This meaning must be interpreted individually by the viewer. It is not told to you in narrative form on the screen. You must figure it out on your own, which is an example of Implicit Meaning.
Work Cited:
Bordwell, D. (1991). Making meaning: Inference and rhetoric in the interpretation of cinema. First Harvard University Press
McMahan, A. (2005). The films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Contemporary Hollywood. International Publishing Group.
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